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The United States on Saturday pledged to provide 40 million U.S. dollars to Afghan government in an effort to boost government capability especially in districts with weak administrative institutions.

“Today’s announcement of District Delivery Program (DDP) represents a generally new way of working in deeper partnership and more fundamental respect for Afghan partners,”the General Administrator of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Rajiv Shah said before inking the agreement here with Afghan Minister for Finance Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal.

He also said that the program will provide critical services including education and health. “First we designed this program together after listening priorities from Afghan people, from district leaders and governors, “he said, adding “it will focus on building sub-national governance and developing capacity in all levels.”

Zahkilwal also said that this fund will be used within two years from now on and the aim of District Delivery Program (DDP) is to train local officials and help them to reside in the districts where government institutions are weak.

The program will cover 48 districts in the restive south and southeastern provinces this year, the Minister added.

Speaking at the occasion, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry said, “this agreement reflexes the U.S. long term commitments to help government of Afghanistan to strength the government structure in all levels, central, provincial and local.”

Announcing new pledge to Afghanistan took place amid tension between Kabul and Washington in the wake of President Hamid Karzai ’s remarks over what he alleged the westerners of involvement Afghanistan last August presidential election on April 1, a claim rejected by both the United States and the United Nations.

The allegations have troubled White House and even warned to cancel President Karzai visit to Washington set for May 12 during President Barack Obama’s brief tour to Kabul late last month.

Meantime, reports emanating from U.S. said that the Afghan president’s visit is intact and he would visit Washington next month.

At least 93 people were injured in clashes between “red-shirts” protesters and security forces in Bangkok Saturday in a sharp escalation of tension as the security forces is serving the emergency rule, according to the information given by the national Erawan Emergency Center at about 4:40 p.m. local time.

In a temporary truce, the army withdrew from Makkawan Rangsan Bridge to the area in front of the Kurusapa Hall of the Education Ministry as more “red-shirts” are arriving there to reinforce their colleagues.

At least 93 people were injured in the first bout of clashes in the afternoon, according to the center. All these injured have been admitted to hospitals in Bangkok, it said.

The Army’s spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said on Nation TV at about 4:00 p.m. the security forces will try to retake the Phan Fah Bridge, one of the major “red-shirts” rally sites.

Earlier the core leaders of “red-shirts” called on their supporters to park all their cars and motorcycles at every intersection around Phan Fah Bridge, one of the “red-shirts” main rally site, to prevent the security forces from entering for a possible dispersion.

All the stations of BTS, or the skytrain transportation system, across Bangkok, have suspended service, the nation TV reported at 3:00 p.m. There are some foreigners stuck inside the stations and “having no idea where to go”, local media reported.

Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu said Saturday that the government will improve its management of religious affairs in line with laws and regulations.

Government officials would be better educated in the laws and regulations regarding religious affairs and carry out their duties legally, said Hui at a function to mark the fifth anniversary of the Regulations on Religious Affairs, the first formal rules on religious affairs issued by the State Council.

In addition, religious groups and people should be more aware of abiding by the law in their religious activities, through proper education, he said.

He said the government would update the regulations and improve their application, though he gave no detailed plans.

With the assistance of religious affairs administrations, religious groups should improve their internal management, including internal rules and frameworks, he said, adding that they should keep better clergy records and standardize religious education.

“We hope all religious groups can follow the regulations in their daily operation and also can help improve legal awareness among religious followers so that they can be law-abiding citizens,” he said.

A plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski crashed near the Smolensk airport in western Russia Saturday, killing the president and all 132 people on board.

Lech Kaczynski, took office after winning the presidential election run-off in October, 2005. Before that, he was Mayor of the country’s capital city Warsaw.

Kaczynski was born in Warsaw in June, 1949. He and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, are child movie stars who won fame in the 1962 movie “The Two Who Stole the Moon,” about two troublemakers who try to get rich by stealing the moon and selling it.

Kaczynski, 60, had been a law professor at Gdansk University from 1991 to 1997. Later he taught at the Law School of Warsaw University, where he graduated in 1971.

The president, a Solidarity activist, became a senator in 1991 after serving as a representative to the National Assembly since 1989.

He had been the country’s prosecutor-general and justice minister in a previous center-right government before he was elected the mayor of Warsaw in 2002.

Kaczynski became well known for he banned the Warsaw gay movement parade in 2004 and 2005, locally known as the Parada Rownosci, stating the lack of necessary documentation by organizers as the reason.

Kaczynski and Jaroslaw formed the socially conservative Law and Justice party in 2001 under the banner of developing the country’s education and economy, fighting corruption and reforming rural areas.

He was married to an economist and has one daughter.

Yemen’s Interior Ministry made orders on Sunday to enforce a ban on carrying weapons in the capital Sanaa.

“The resolution on banning carrying weapons in the capital Sanaa must be applied to everyone alike, without exception,” the ministry said in a statement directed to the police and security agencies.

The campaign, which is part of a nationwide anti-arms-carry campaign launched in late 2007, targets all entrances of roads leading to the capital as it authorized security checkpoints to confiscate any piece of arms seized during inspection.

The ministry’s resolution also bans carrying arms during wedding ceremonies in the neighborhoods of Sanaa, despite that bearing firearms during marriages are considered as a main traditional part of the Yemeni custom.

Meanwhile, searching for wanted people and arresting them in Sanaa will also be included in the campaign, said the statement.

Yemeni police have confiscated more than 79,000 firearms in Sanaa and other major cities across the country since August 2007, according to Defense Ministry’s website 26sep.net.

Local reports said that almost all Yemeni families have ammunition as the country’s 21 million population own a total of more than 60 million pieces of firearms with no lack of heavy machine-guns and rocket launchers.

Yemen, described as a place of happiness in ancient books, is now one of the world’s most underdeveloped countries with persistent high levels of poverty, unemployment rate and illiteracy, and the kind of soil for terrorism, which is annoying the country.

Analysts stress that only by combining anti-terrorism efforts with economic development, poverty relief and improved educational levels can Yemen eliminate terrorism in its territory and bring back the title of the place of happiness.

Two high-ranking officials of Shijiazhuang city, capital of north China’s Hebei Province, had been given administrative penalties over involvement with a woman politician who forged identity documents to gain rapid promotions.

Zhang Zhenjiang, then deputy Party head of Shijiazhuang City and Li Jianhua, head of Shijiazhuang’s publicity department were given administrative warnings, according to a statement from Hebei’s discipline inspection commission Sunday.

On March 12, Wang Yali, a member of the Shijiazhuang municipal committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, was arrested for forging documents to obtain government jobs and claim inheritance that did not belong to her.

Wang allegedly faked all her personal information, including name, age, education and work experience, except her gender.

Internet postings ridiculed Wang’s resume, which showed that she was a pharmacist in an army hospital at the age of 12.

Despite the obviously problematic forgery, Wang had been rapidly promoted from 1998 to 2007.

Live to work, or work for a life — Ding Shuai had to make a tough decision after six years living in the Chinese capital, home to nearly 20 million people.

A month ago, Ding, 24, packed all his belongings and moved to Xiamen, a coastal city of 2.52 million people in southeast China’s Fujian Province.

It was not Beijing’s notoriously high housing prices that made him leave, but the lifestyle.

“The rat race in the capital exhausted me,” Ding says.

He had struggled in Beijing, working as a model and TV program host with a monthly income of about 5,000 yuan (732.5 U.S. dollars) after graduating from a leading university in Beijing.

“Last November I suddenly lost my voice after days of round-the-clock work,” Ding said. “I still feel uncomfortable when singing high notes.”

The incident helped seal his decision to accept an offer to be a host on a local TV station in Xiamen.

He bought a 70-square-meter apartment in Xiamen.

“My parents can come to stay with me after I move this summer,” he says. “It’s a new beginning rather than a retreat from failure.”

An ongoing poll by China’s leading portal, Sina.com, shows many young Chinese feel the same way. From March 1 to Saturday, 75.3 percent of the total 8,729 participants said they planned to leave big cities, like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Professor Xia Xueluan, a sociologist at Peking University, welcomes the trend.

Thousands of Poles gathered in front of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw on Saturday to lay flowers and light candles in honor of Polish President Lech Saczynski and the country’s ruling elite killed in a plane crash in western Russia.

The 26-year-old Tupolev Tu-154 was enroute from Warsaw to Smolensk, Russia on Saturday morning, when it went down in thick fog with the president, his wife, the army chief of staff, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer and the central bank governor aboard, said Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Pszkowski.

Russia’s Emergency Ministry said that 96 people were killed, including a delegation of 88 Poles headed to Russia to attend events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers.

Hours after the crash,the Polish government announced that there would be a presidential election before June in line with the country’s constitution.

Parliament speaker Bronislaw Komorowski took over presidential duties and declared a week of mourning.

All the bodies of the victims have been found and the body of the Polish president has been identified by his twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk described the crash as “the most tragic event of the country’s post-war history.” He has decided to scrap a visit to the United States on Monday for a nuclear security summit.

“Following the air disaster near Smolensk, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has canceled his visits to Washington and Canada scheduled for next week,” the government press office said.

In a television address to the Polish people on Saturday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced April 12 a day of national mourning for the victims of the plane crash.

Medvedev stressed that he had ordered a thorough investigation into the causes of the crash.

“This work will be done in close interaction with corresponding Polish structures and agencies,” he said. “All instructions have been given to this end.”

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has established an investigation committee and later mourned with his Polish counterpart at the crash site.

The bodies of the crash victims would be sent to Moscow for identification, and a special center would be established to help the victims’ relatives from Poland, Putin said.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s investigations committee has opened investigation into the crash.

“The investigation is looking into various theories…including unfavorable weather, human error, and technical malfunctions,” the committee said in a statement.

Kaczynski, 60, took office after winning an election run-off in October, 2005. Before that, he had been mayor of Warsaw, Poland’s capital.

He is the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski died in a plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943.

He had been the country’s prosecutor-general and justice minister in a previous center-right government before being elected Warsaw mayor in 2002.

Kaczynski became well known for banning gay pride parades in Warsaw in 2004 and 2005, citing a lack of necessary documentation by organizers as the reason.

Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw formed the socially conservative Law and Justice party in 2001 under the banner of developing the country’s education and economy, fighting corruption and reforming rural areas.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service.

The United States and Brazil signed an agreement here Monday on defense cooperation in such areas as research and development, logistics support, technology security, and the acquisition of defense products and services.

The accord, signed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his Brazilian counterpart, Nelson Jobim, will “enable U.S.-Brazil defense cooperation to deepen and expand into new areas of mutual interest,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

Under the agreement, the two sides will also work together on information exchanges on topics such as operational experiences, defense technology, and international peacekeeping operations.

Also covered in the accord will be combined military training and education and joint military exercises, exchanges of instructors and students from defense institutions, naval ship visits, and defense-related commercial initiatives.

UN Deputy Secretary- general Asha-Rose Migiro, visiting Haiti three months to the day after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, has discussed with President Rene Preval the challenges facing the impoverished country, including education reform, law enforcement and social and political stability, Martin Nesirky, the UN spokesman, told reporters here on Monday.

Migiro is also surveying the efforts of the UN and the Haitian government to protect camp residents from sexual violence and related problems, Nesirky said.

Migiro, who arrived in the Caribbean country on Sunday, spent several hours at a camp in downtown Port-au-Prince, the ruined capital, where she held informal talks with residents and formal meetings with women’s groups, who complained of sexual abuse in the camps.

She assured them of UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon’s firm resolve to work with the Haitian government and its partners to improve their conditions. In dispatching Migiro, Ban voiced particular concern at reports of sexual violence against women and children.

“Today she is meeting with the UN Mission leadership and leaders of various humanitarian clusters working on delivering assistance and providing protection to displaced Haitians,” Nesirky said. “She will also visit the town of Leogane, which was the epicenter of the earthquake to discuss child protection issues with Haitian officials.”

The United Nations plays a central role in uniting the world to pool resources for the humanitarian relief, economic recovery and reconstruction in quake-hit Haiti.